Wow, an imager running at 600*F? Even if UV only that is one hell of an accomplishment. Hazcams via blacklight!

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Space Enthusiast Richard Hendricks --"The engineers, as usual, made a tremendous fuss. Again as usual, they did the job in half the time they had dismissed as being absolutely impossible." --Rescue Party, Arthur C ClarkeMother Nature is the final inspector of all quality.

Inside the 14-ton, stainless steel, 3- by 6-foot chamber, temperatures can soar beyond 900 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than the surface of Venus. At the same time, pressure can reach nearly 100 times the weight of Earth’s atmosphere at sea level.

[...]

In addition to scientific research, GEER also will be used to test sensors and equipment, such as high-temperature electronics, that one day could enable long-duration surface missions to Earth’s mysterious sister planet.

"The project started January 2014 and has eightPhD students in the different work packages.Our present bipolar technology has been scaledto smaller transistors, and self‐aligned nickelcontacts have been developed. Four newintegrated circuit designs were made fordifferent parts of the lander electronics: CMOScircuit test set, a 4‐bit microprocessor, RFtransistors for the radio transceiver and aprototype pixel sensor for the imaging. Most ofthese have been fabricated by the PhD studentsin the KTH Myfab clean room, some are still inprogress. Preliminary testing and modelingshow operation up to 550 °C, sufficient for theVenus target. A first demonstration has beenmade of capacitive inertial sensing at hightemperatures; gas sensors have been annealedat 500 °C for 300 h; photodiodes sensitive in thenear UV range (200 to 400 nm) have been testedup to 550 °C. Power sources have beenidentified, and passive components likeinductors have been tested to 500 °C."

The Hot Operating Temperature Technology (HOTTech) program supports the advanced development of technologies for the robotic exploration of high-temperature environments, such as the Venus surface, Mercury, or the deep atmosphere of Gas Giants. The goal of the program is to develop and mature technologies that will enable, significantly enhance, or reduce technical risk for in situ missions to high-temperature environments with temperatures approaching 500 degrees Celsius or higher. It is a priority for NASA to invest in technology developments that mitigate the risks of mission concepts proposed in response to upcoming Announcements of Opportunity (AO) and expand the range of science that might be achieved with future missions. Note that this HOTTech program element is not soliciting hardware for a flight opportunity.

HOTTech is limited to high temperature electrical and electronic systems that could be needed for potentially extended in situ missions to such environments. NASA seeks to maximize the benefits of its technology investments and consequently technologies that offer terrestrial benefits, in addition to meeting needs of planetary science. While specific technology readiness levels are not prescribed for the HOTTech program, proposers are reminded that the goal of the program is to mature technologies so they can be proposed as part of a selectable mission concept or technology demonstration to a flight AO with reduced risk. It is the responsibility of the proposer to describe how their proposed technology development effort addresses the goals of enabling or enhancing future mission capability or reducing risk and how the technology will be matured for a flight opportunity as part of an integrated system. Efforts that focus on advancing the technology readiness level (TRL) of a system composed of multiple existing technologies at various TRLs are allowed under this opportunity.

Notices of Intent are requested by September 28, 2016, and the due date for proposals is November 23, 2016.

An oscillator is a very important step in creating a full Silicon Carbide based CPU capable of operating a Venus temperatures. 1 MHz doesn't sound like much, but it is more than enough for basic analysis. The hard thing to get working is an imager - high temps mean leaky pixels. This is yet another great example of NASA dual use, with this tech being very useful for deep well operation.

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Space Enthusiast Richard Hendricks --"The engineers, as usual, made a tremendous fuss. Again as usual, they did the job in half the time they had dismissed as being absolutely impossible." --Rescue Party, Arthur C ClarkeMother Nature is the final inspector of all quality.

The hard thing to get working is an imager - high temps mean leaky pixels.

It may be interesting for those who don't know – cameras used for amateur photography of Deep Sky Objects are cooled internally, reducing the incidence of such noise. A galaxy or nebula may be roughly 1/100,000th as luminous as a planet, and cooling the camera to, say, -15C when outside temperatures are +15C can help tremendously in producing a clear image, whereas this is not needed for imaging planets.

On the surface of Venus, the luminosity isn't a problem, but the temperature is. On the other hand, another solution to this problem would be to provide passive or active cooling for just long enough to take one image, then let the camera die. Potentially, almost all of the science value would be in taking a single image as soon as possible after landing.

...provide passive or active cooling for just long enough to take one image, then let the camera die....

So long as the ccd-equivalent sensor doesn't degrade with the heat, active per-image cooling strikes me as feasible. I'd really like to see a rover, rather than just a fixed lander, so multiple images are important. Alternatively, I could envision something like polaroid instant film, a ccd-equivalent on something like a roll, where we get one shot per sensor, read and transmit the image, then roll to the next good sensor.

One problem (aside from heat tolerance) with current sensors is that they have a strong response in the infrared. Not such a good thing on Venus.

Imagine a wind-powered rover using UV cameras to drive across Venus, stopping to recharge using a windmill, and with UV LEDs to keep driving during the Venusian night!

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Space Enthusiast Richard Hendricks --"The engineers, as usual, made a tremendous fuss. Again as usual, they did the job in half the time they had dismissed as being absolutely impossible." --Rescue Party, Arthur C ClarkeMother Nature is the final inspector of all quality.

One problem (aside from heat tolerance) with current sensors is that they have a strong response in the infrared. Not such a good thing on Venus.

IR cut filters are trivial. The wavelengths silicon sensors are sensitive to are in the very near IR near 1 micron, not in the thermal IR. Imaging in the near IR can be a good thing on Venus because there is less scattering from the atmosphere, at least in some bandpasses. Bottom line: no new technology required if there is some way to cool the sensor.

And we are a long way from having electronics that work at Venus ambient, let alone image sensors, this most recent development notwithstanding.

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Disclaimer: This post is based on public information only. Any opinions are my own.

It sounds like we might be able to contemplate a dumb lander, just sending some basic information like temperature, wind speed, and perhaps seismic data, as early as 5 years from now. Optimistically, maybe a rover with imager in 10-15 years. Technology is coming along. At my age, these time scales aren't too bad

Did anybody notice that the SiC imaging chip in question is solar blind? That means operating in a spectrum area of UV that the sun doesn't put out very much of, let alone worrying whether any of that output could make it through the atmosphere. Which means in turn that you are going to have to have some kind of powerful very short wave UV illuminator to light up the area with.

That's not the way I interpreted the specifications. I think they meant solar-blind in the sense that they don't need special protection against the IR and visible light coming from the Sun: The sensor is inherently not sensitive to IR and visible light, and can tolerate very high operating temperatures.

mcaplinger - The abstract is really for a UV-targeted imager, not necessarily a SiC specific one. They state

"The high sensitivity of silicon CCDs and CMOS arrays inthe visible and near infrared (IR) is a liability when employingthese same arrays in the ultraviolet. As exemplified in theHubble telescope instruments, long wavelength blocking filtersexact a high price due to their low transmission in the ultraviolet."

So for their needs a SiC imager is better for UV sun imaging than an Si based imager + IR Cut.

I posted the link to show that SiC based imagers (not necessarily tuned for the Venus environment yet) do exist. They do point out the underlying JFET technology can tolerate 300*C temps.

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Space Enthusiast Richard Hendricks --"The engineers, as usual, made a tremendous fuss. Again as usual, they did the job in half the time they had dismissed as being absolutely impossible." --Rescue Party, Arthur C ClarkeMother Nature is the final inspector of all quality.

The current record holder has 175 transistors and is already considered for actual missions. The article also mentions a separate work done at JPL using mechatronics (gears and stuff) instead of transistors, which sounds positively like steampunk.

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